Your Memories are Sponsored by a Fossil Fuel Company
by Matt Thompson
Your memories are sponsored by a fossil fuel company
When you try to recall events from your childhood,
Where you left your keys, past lovers, pin codes
Or someone’s birthday—
Your mind drifts into reveries of shale gas, swilling across your septum
Like heavenly exhaust fumes
Dying embers in the fireplace of your family home.
Your autonomic responses are sponsored by a neoliberal think-tank
Each nerve ending is funded via a tax-deductible shell corporation.
Do not trust your eyes and ears
That tingling in your fingertips
Can be monetized
If you sign away your peripheral rights
For a period of not less than twenty years
And not greater than your natural lifespan.
Your cognitive functions are sponsored by an online retail warehouse
All external stimuli will be checked for defects
And carefully processed
According to the protocols set down in your contract.
Same-day delivery is guaranteed
Allowing for acts of God, human error, software failures,
Or terrorist attacks.
We regret to inform you that expedited returns
Are not available under any circumstances.
Your dreams are sponsored by a social media content provider
By clicking here you grant us access
To hidden perceptions, subliminal urges
Both those you wish to broadcast and those best kept concealed.
Data of such a sensitive type
Is safe in our hands
Even without the necessary training
To supervise the aftermath
With an efficient
Yet cheery
Expertise.
Copyright © 2021 by Matt Thompson